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" I'm less crazy and unhappy when I'm writing. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Crazy
Writing
Unhappy
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" As an author, you're really grateful for the people who are supporting you, but on some other level, that can be a dangerous echo chamber. "
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" When somebody keeps telling you, 'This book is amazing,' you sort of have this pleasing instinct to say, 'Oh, let me make you happy again; let me do that trick again.' "
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" Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences - large scale engineering, neuroscience. "
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" The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. "
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" I am interested in agricultural corporations and how they function. The idea that they own the genetics of our food supply is a really compelling thing to me. "
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" All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought. "
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" The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. "
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" We're all happier when we know less, because the details are frightening and haven't really improved much. The more you pay attention, the more horrifying the world is. "
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" When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Ship
World
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" There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. "
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Parents
People
Country
" I know people who have gone into career death spins, and that's something you're always aware of as a writer. "
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People
You
Always
" I think that we live in a highly specialized, technologically advanced society. Highly developed societies tend to have very remote understandings about what underlies our prosperity. "
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Our
Society
Think
" Maybe storytelling belongs in audio - a short story is the length of a commute. That can be a sacred spot where you have the ear of the reader without having to compete with other media like games or TV. "
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Story
You
Storytelling
" I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave? "
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React
How
Question
" I didn't think of myself as writing 'cli-fi,' but I'll take the label. I'll take any label that makes someone think they might be interested in my stories. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Think
Someone
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" I don't know why we choose to reach out to help another person, or why we decide that we can't, and withdraw and try to care only for ourselves, but I'm fascinated by that choice. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Care
Choice
Choose
" Originally, 'The Windup Girl' started as a short story - a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn't work very well. "
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Girl
Work
Story
" The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren't your typical sci-fi subjects, but it's really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what's right. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Research
Anxiety
Right
" The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Ideas
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" I think that, when I think about the future that 'The Water Knife' represents, it's one where there's a lack of oversight, planning and organization. "
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Future
Planning
Think
" A wise human would have an understanding of the supply chain and how the pieces fit together. But it's against our nature to think about it. "
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Together
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" Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect. "
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Need
Connect
Decide
" I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like. "
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Like
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" When we live the 21st-century good life, almost every aspect of it is predicated on not looking at the implications of what we're up to. Happiness at this point has a lot to do with not looking, so you don't feel complicit in some vast and awful enterprise. "
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" I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. "
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Ideas
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" I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice. "
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Return
Reach
Choice
" I don't put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction - looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That's a science fictional tool. "
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Future
Moment
Science
" I think the fact that we, as writers, don't engage with resource-level questions is a symptom of our society where we just don't know where our stuff comes from. "
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" I think inherently, a little bit, I'm a bit of a pleaser, and I want people to like me and be nice, and to not ruffle feathers and just make everybody happy and stuff. It's a personality flaw. "
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" By nature I'm sort of an introvert. "
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